Living Leviticus! by Daniel Montgomery

Sojourn celebrated Ash Wednesday this morning with a 6:30am worship service. As sleepy-eyed people made their way into the dimly lit auditorium, you could see a few heads covered with linen. It was, after all, the sanctuary and God did, after all, command women to cover their heads when they entered the tabernacle for worship.

Now, before you think Sojourn has had a major doctrinal shift and is going all Levitical, let me assure you that Sojourn is not going to start enforcing the Law. Only a few of us are. We issued a challenge and seven people answered and committed to live by Levitical Law as closely as they could for the next 20 days. The team: Brittany Rowe, Emily Flanigan, Leslie Hoback, Kimberly Hurt, Tyler Ratliff, Jesse Moss and Michael Morgan. These are the few and the proud: the Levites.

It was really cool to see the head coverings this morning, as an outward sign that some people among us are going to immerse themselves in the Old Testament we’ve been working through for the past two months. It’s just tough to see brothers and sisters digging into the hardest book of the Bible and pulling out rules that Christians are all to eager to be free of in the name of grace (who doesn’t love bacon and lobster?).

Now, don’t get me wrong. Grace and freedom from the penalty of the Law are beautiful, and I’m not pushing some new legalism where the pious still follow the Law in order to stay righteous. But I’m looking forward to seeing real people try to live by the real Law. I’m looking forward to hearing their stories of what it would take to actually be ‘clean’ in the Old Testament and imagining just what it took for Jesus Christ to be completely sinless

This post is just a preview. Look for official introductions to the Levites and their plans for keeping the Law in the next few days here on the TravelBlog. Would you be able to make it 20 days as an Israelite?

This is the only part of the Law the teams can skip.